I was feeling sympathetic with the author regarding the raise until I realised he was asking for it a few weeks after joining. I think his boss was right, he accepted the salary when he joined; if he didn't like it he should have negotiated at the time. I'm sure a raise would have be considered after a suitable period.
I disagree strongly. The boss was taking advantage of an information asymmetry and/or a naive negotiator.
When I set pay, I'm strongly committed to rewarding people based on the work they do and how well they do it, not how resistant they are to me screwing around with them in negotiations.
It was reasonable to ask for the raise; it could be that the boss (or some other part of Amazon) had made a mistake. By asking, the guy discovered that the boss had no interest in being fair to his employees. That's certainly something worth quitting over.
Right, so he made a bad decision by taking the job. It's still much better to realise you made a bad decision and cut your losses (by quitting), than blindly sticking with it.
Given he was about to quit anyway if he wasn't offered a raise, there was no harm to asking.
It's a little more complicated than that. First, the job was more painful than expected. Second, they lied to him about starting salaries, telling him that all new employees in that position started at the rate he got. Then they hired another employee into that position for higher, just weeks later.
And finally, you have to ask for things to get them. If he just quit without asking, he'd never know if he could have gotten that raise instead. Now, he knows. At a different company, he might actually have gotten it.
I think he made exactly the right decision at each step, given the knowledge he had at that point.
Personally, I probably would have chosen to stick it out at that company until I found that second job, instead of quitting on the spot, but that's me. But the end result wouldn't be that different.
Sounds like he wants union work, then, with the benefits (such as complete wage transparency and information clarify) but also the detriments (lobsters in a pot pulling each other down, impossible to exceed the boundaries of a position).
I don't want union work. When I hear people whine and bitch because they think they're worth as much as other employees...I don't know but it really makes me dislike them. I despise that mentality. Someone else negotiated better than you -- suck it up, crybaby.
He learned new market information, negotiated the cost of his services (not re-negging because it's at-will employment), and when he couldn't strike a deal, he did so with another party. This is the free-market at work, while you are going on a non-sequitur political rant that doesn't make any sense since what he did is pretty much the opposite of unionizing.
The piece is at its core a whiny complaint, complaining of grievous injustice. That you try to explain it away as simple market forces is truly laughable. Yes, the attitude expressed in the piece is the foundation of unionization.
If the problem was that he wasn't as good as the other employee, the boss could say that. (The boss could say it even if it wasn't true.) The boss pretends on one hand to be locked in by bureaucracy when he doesn't want to do something, but they aren't really stopping him.
Anyway, it seems he is negotiating a better salary. The boss refused to deal so he walked. Good.
Comments
I was feeling sympathetic with the author regarding the raise until I realised he was asking for it a few weeks after joining. I think his boss was right, he accepted the salary when he joined; if he didn't like it he should have negotiated at the time. I'm sure a raise would have be considered after a suitable period.
I disagree strongly. The boss was taking advantage of an information asymmetry and/or a naive negotiator.
When I set pay, I'm strongly committed to rewarding people based on the work they do and how well they do it, not how resistant they are to me screwing around with them in negotiations.
It was reasonable to ask for the raise; it could be that the boss (or some other part of Amazon) had made a mistake. By asking, the guy discovered that the boss had no interest in being fair to his employees. That's certainly something worth quitting over.
Right, so he made a bad decision by taking the job. It's still much better to realise you made a bad decision and cut your losses (by quitting), than blindly sticking with it.
Given he was about to quit anyway if he wasn't offered a raise, there was no harm to asking.
But then it looks like Jeff Bezos didn't teach him when to quit.
There's a difference between a bad boss and making a bad salary negotiation when you take a new job.
Nice post anyway, but it's a little bit like "I've seen it in the tea leaves".
Edit: typo
It's a little more complicated than that. First, the job was more painful than expected. Second, they lied to him about starting salaries, telling him that all new employees in that position started at the rate he got. Then they hired another employee into that position for higher, just weeks later.
And finally, you have to ask for things to get them. If he just quit without asking, he'd never know if he could have gotten that raise instead. Now, he knows. At a different company, he might actually have gotten it.
I think he made exactly the right decision at each step, given the knowledge he had at that point.
Personally, I probably would have chosen to stick it out at that company until I found that second job, instead of quitting on the spot, but that's me. But the end result wouldn't be that different.
Sounds like he wants union work, then, with the benefits (such as complete wage transparency and information clarify) but also the detriments (lobsters in a pot pulling each other down, impossible to exceed the boundaries of a position).
I don't want union work. When I hear people whine and bitch because they think they're worth as much as other employees...I don't know but it really makes me dislike them. I despise that mentality. Someone else negotiated better than you -- suck it up, crybaby.
He learned new market information, negotiated the cost of his services (not re-negging because it's at-will employment), and when he couldn't strike a deal, he did so with another party. This is the free-market at work, while you are going on a non-sequitur political rant that doesn't make any sense since what he did is pretty much the opposite of unionizing.
Political rant?
The piece is at its core a whiny complaint, complaining of grievous injustice. That you try to explain it away as simple market forces is truly laughable. Yes, the attitude expressed in the piece is the foundation of unionization.
If the problem was that he wasn't as good as the other employee, the boss could say that. (The boss could say it even if it wasn't true.) The boss pretends on one hand to be locked in by bureaucracy when he doesn't want to do something, but they aren't really stopping him.
Anyway, it seems he is negotiating a better salary. The boss refused to deal so he walked. Good.
He didn't "whine and bitch". He quit.